


The King of the Faeries

by Llewcie



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Fae & Fairies, M/M, Music, Violins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 02:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9413588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llewcie/pseuds/Llewcie
Summary: Growing up in 1940's Appalachia, young Will has nothing but his music to keep him company.  But when he learns a song from deep in the woods, it will haunt him even as he is forbidden to play it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [ this post](http://thehauntedreader.tumblr.com/post/146084250953/bodaciousbanshee-cemeteryconservation). Originally written for storytime in the Cannibal Pub. Immense gratitude to Thymogenic, my beta.

Will Graham was seven years old when he picked up his mother's fiddle and interrupted the family dinner with an impromptu concert of the songs he had heard during the passing Appalachian winter nights from his little trundle bed. It would have been entirely astonishing had Will not had to play the violin like a very small cello, his tiny hands flattening notes due to the stretch being too far, and his pinky finger not being quite strong enough to hold down the strings. Though the family was not wealthy, Will's parents managed to fit in enough extra work to afford a little fiddle that fit right into his hands. 

Once he had it, he almost never stopped playing. He played every song that he heard, and then went to the neighbors to learn their songs, and the neighbor's neighbors, until he had heard and played every song in the valley. Many whispered that he was a prodigy, that he would go far if he could only take lessons, but there was no money for lessons-- there was hardly money for food to fill the table. So Will continued to wander, and when he ran out of songs to learn, he traveled into the woods that surrounded the valley, playing back the songs of the birds and the cries of wild things. He became a common sight to all that lived in the valley, a small boy with a head of dark curls in worn linen shirts and trousers, few coins in his pocket from those who could afford to pay him for a tune.

One warm summer night Will wasn't home at his appointed time. His parents cast increasingly worried glances out at the falling darkness, and the nursemaid, Hetty, who lived with them and shared their table and daily work, stood at the threshold of the little cabin and watched the sun fall with a solemn expression. At last, even as the last sliver of sun winked below the horizon, Will came out of the trees surrounding their farm, breathless with excitement. He was 10 years old now, and had traded his baby fiddle for a larger one, and even it was small in his hands now. He barreled past Hetty and announced to the household gathered at the table to wait for him, that he had learned a new song. Before his father could even demand to know why he had been out so late, he gripped the fiddle and drew the bow across the strings.

It was a magical, lilting melody. Hauntingly familiar, like a song that they had known and forgotten. His little sister was the first to get up and twirl around on the rug in front of the fire. His mother's feet began to dance, and her husband took her hand to lead her. As chairs fell back from the table, seven people trying to dance all at once, the old nursemaid rushed to the boy and plucked the bow right out of his hand. "Stop!" She had a twisted, fearful expression on her face-- something Will had never seen before, even when his sister came out backwards from the womb. She held the bow high up in the room where everyone had stilled in varying states of confusion, frozen motionless. "Never play that song, Will Graham."

"But!" he protested.

She looked down sternly, sadly at him. "You will call the King of the Faeries and we will all be lost, Will. I know where you have been wandering. You know the faery rings are strictly off limits."

"But I didn't step in!" he protested, but he knew it was weak. 

Hetty frowned at him. "You know it doesn't matter now." With a sharp downward strike, she snapped the bow in half, and then took the little violin from his nerveless fingers. She broke that too, and tossed them both in the fire. "I free you, Will Graham, from your own foolishness." His mother and father stirred, blinking at the room as if they had just woken. 

Huge tears formed in his eyes, streaking his cheeks. "I HATE YOU!" he screamed, and ran down the hall to the room he shared with his brothers and sisters. 

The little violin burned, and his heart was broken.

Will Graham did not pick up a violin for 30 years, and when he did it was more happenstance than anything else. He had grown up and moved away from the little cabin of his youth into a modest apartment on the 4th floor, and his parents had both passed on, one from cancer and the other from heartbreak. His brothers and his sisters had scattered to the four corners of the earth. Hetty was still alive, and they sent cards to each other on birthdays and at Christmas, and for all intents and purposes that was the only contact Will had with his childhood. So when he walked into the secondhand store and saw the dusty violin case on a shelf in the back, for a moment he didn’t remember at all that he used to play. A feeling so strange came over him, as if he were simultaneously drawn and repulsed, and he struggled with mild nausea for a moment until he put his hand on the case, and flicked open the latches. With a single touch to the smooth rosewood body, his stomach was soothed, and his mind settled.

He bought it without even asking the price. Somehow he found himself at home, the violin clutched in his hand, without knowing quite how he had gotten back. He settled the bow into his hand, and bounced it off the strings. And he began to play. At first entirely uncertain where the tune was coming from, he slowly realized it was the song that he had heard in the woods, that long ago evening, as the fireflies had danced around his curly head. The one Hetty had not let him play. Why had she not? He couldn't remember.

He played it, and he played it again.

And he played it a third time.

The lights winked out with a metallic plink. And a voice sounded from behind him... a voice as rich as night, as sweet as blood...

"I've been waiting 30 years to hear that song from your bow."

Will didn't move, the chill between his shoulder blades freezing him outwards, the fiddle still held in the crook of his neck. He cleared his throat, and the air tasted of a green sweetness, a lush tang of some otherworldly green space that existed away from the eyes of humans. "I know your voice." Will said. "Have we met?"

The low voice behind him gave a dark chuckle. "In a manner of speaking, Will Graham." And Will felt the press of strong fingers right between his shoulder blades. He jumped in his own skin, and whirled around, bow and fiddle held out like weapons. In front of him stood a man. He did not look, to Will's eyes, like a magical being, not at first. Long hair in a thick braid fell over a powerful set of shoulders, and he had the classic stance of a dancer, one foot perpendicular to the other. But as Will looked longer, he saw that the man's hair was threaded with strands of silver and gold that gleamed in the light, and the stripe in the middle of his beard glimmered like white gold.

He was wearing one of Will's flannels.

He grinned a toothy grin as recognition flooded over Will's shocked face. "I've been looking for that fucking shirt for ages!" The man made a moue of his shapely mouth.

"How ungrateful, my dear Will. After all, I found you your fiddle." He motioned to the instrument now being wielded like a club. Slowly, Will lowered it, feeling abashed.

"I found the fiddle in a junk shop," Will protested. The man only smiled, a sweet curve of lips. It made him appear unnervingly appealing.

"And if you were to look for that little shop now, you would be looking for a long time, little human."

They studied each other a long moment in silence, until Will sighed, his arms relaxing. "I do remember you." A glimmer in the other man's eye was all that gave away his interest. "I remember that you sang to me."

"I did, Will Graham. They very same song that you played for me."

Will looked at the floor, noticing that the man was also wearing his good oxblood dress boots, and his jeans. He rubbed a hand through his curly hair. "What have I done?"

The man smiled, teeth like razors. "You opened the door, my darling boy."

Will tried to meet his eyes, even though that smile was compelling him to run, or fall to his knees. He didn't know which desire was stronger, and so he defaulted frozen to the spot, breathing deep from his gut in an attempt to calm himself. "Are you going to kill me?"

The man scoffed, seeming insulted. "Had I wanted to kill you, I would have done so 30 years ago. Or taken you, regardless of your nursemaid's protections on you."

Will's body relaxed a bit, more at the reaction than the words. He shook his head in confusion. "Protections?" Will took another step closer. "Who are you?"

The man before him cocked his head, his maroon eyes bright and deep. "Haven't you guessed, Will?"

And the truth is he had. He couldn't bring himself to say it-- a long lifetime of being warned against calling out the Fae warred against his natural inclination to speak the truth as he saw it. Instead, he chose a different path, perhaps not as brave. "I don't believe in faeries." His voice was not as strong as he would have liked.

The man held a large, strong hand to his heart, sketching a tiny mocking retreat. "That hardly matters, Will, since we believe in you." And suddenly, the room erupted into chaos-- whizzing shapes everywhere as faeries emerged from every available shadow to spin the room into a crazed tornado of objects. Will and the man stood in the center of it, Will's eyes alight with shock. His mouth gaped open as teacups and fishing lures spun madly by him. A book hit him in the shoulder, and he was pelted by feathers and stinging bits of bone. He held his arms over his face to protect his eyes.

"Enough," the man whispered, like the loudest clap of thunder, and in an instant everything was back where it belonged, spinning to stillness and settling, and the shadows were empty again. The man gave an elegant bow and then, suddenly, he was clothed in a black cloak of feathers, his body wreathed in shadow, and his eyes were the color of fresh blood. 

"Call me again, Will Graham, and I will come for you."

Will stood shakily in the center of the room, and struggled to find his voice. "And where will you take me?"

"Home, Will." The man smiled at him, and there was such a longing there that Will's heart gave a thud against his ribcage. "I will take you home."

Before Will could protest, he was gone. And it felt like the light of the world went with him.

***

That night Will called his old nursemaid. Her name was Hetty, and she was well over 80 years old. As soon as she heard his voice, she sighed. 

"Well, you played the song, didn't you?"

He snorted into the phone. She always could read him like all of his thoughts were written out on paper before her. "I always hated you a little for burning my violin, but now I understand why, I think." She was silent. She wasn’t going to apologise for defending him, no matter how many unbecoming, foot-stamping fits he threw. He swallowed. "Who is he?"

"Hmph." Will could see her narrowed eyes, and the curl of her lip— he had been its target more times than either of them could count." He is who he says he is."

"Well, he didn’t say. Just stole my best flannel and turned my house into a windstorm."

She chuckled, a dry thing. "Well, Hannibal was always dramatic."

"Is that his name?" The sound of it in Will's ears rang like bells, like water from a great height. Hetty hummed at him.

"I've fought him over you for long enough." She sounded tired, but not sad. More at the point of making an important decision that would relieve her of a long-held burden. "I protected you, and now you're grown and you can make your own decisions about him."

"Is he really…?" Will was stuck on this, and was a little embarrassed by it.

"Fae? Yes, child. More than that-- he is king of the Appalachian Court-- perhaps more than that now. He always liked collecting provinces." She paused, and then sighed, an exhale of heavy release. "He is an old and wily and dangerous creature. He is capable of great cruelty, but I never thought he was capable of love." There was an old longing there, tucked away. "And then he met you."

"He taught me the song. He sang it to me."

"But you had to be the one to play it, and thrice. That was the Rule we bargained." She sounded immensely satisfied.

"I was a child."

"And now you're a man. And you can make your own decisions about him, Will Graham. I'm quit of him, and I've got tea cakes in the oven." She made to hang up, but Will had one more question. Cruel or not, he had to ask.

"Hetty… would you have gone with him, had he asked, knowing what you know?"

"In a heartbeat, my love." And she hung up the phone.

***

That night, after looking around at his small apartment, in the heart of a city he had always hated, he knew he had already made his decision. He took up his fiddle, and he played slow and sweet, and even before the last note faded into the air, he knew he was not alone. "Hannibal," he whispered.

A breath of a laugh settled against the back of his neck, warm and tinged with greenery and sunlight. "You've spoken with Hetty."

"She convinced me to call you." Will swallowed. Hannibal was close to him, but not touching him, and Will had the impulse to step back into him, and be wrapped in that black feathered cloak, in those strong arms.

"Hmm. Perhaps you had already made up your mind, Will Graham?"

Will smiled. "Perhaps I had, Hannibal."

An amused rumble behind him. "You use my name too freely."

Will slowly turned around, to find Hannibal looking down at him, soft bright blood eyes and tawny skin, his braid gleaming in the half-light. The expression on his face was a mix of adoration and wariness. 

"You've waited a long time to hear your name on my lips." And Will knew, from the fleeting pain in those incredible eyes, that it was true.

"I've watched you grow, and I have waited for you to play my song, and I have lost hope that you ever would. And now I find, that for all my glory and kingdom and power, that you have the advantage over me." Hannibal's voice was barely a whisper, the admission clearly painful.

Will looked down, and took in all of the King of the Faeries before him. He was indeed powerful, and Will read cruelty in the red-tinged sharpness of his nails. But he also saw that Hannibal's body was bowed toward him, and his eyes were lost. Will stepped in to him, and again, until Hannibal's hand settled on his hip to hold him steady.

"Take me home," he murmured. Hannibal's breath was against his forehead, and then, gently, his mouth pressed there, more a promise than a kiss. Hannibal's arms came around him, and his cloak covered them both.

Then the room was empty, and both of them just a memory, a delicate note on the wind, soon lost.


End file.
